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Dropped Eggs

Poached eggs served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dropped Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Bring 1 quart of water to a boil in a frying pan and add 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. Break each egg into a saucer, then slide it carefully into the salted water.

  3. Cook until the egg white is firm.

Serve

  1. Lift the eggs out with a spatula and place them on toasted bread.

  2. Serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set their whites in the hot water while the yolks stay soft, forming the main filling.
Toasted bread
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that holds the egg and soaks up the yolk.

The step that matters

Cook until the egg white is firm. Egg white begins setting around 60°C and firms as it heats, while the yolk stays runny. Stopping too early leaves the white slippery and sprawling; cooking too long makes the yolk firm. Water kept just below a boil helps the egg hold its shape.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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